For as long as there has been a Festival de Cannes, critics and commentators have complained about everything from the films in the Official Selection ("The best stuff screened Out of Competition!") to some of the juries' questionable prizewinners. Cannes provides an annual opportunity to gripe about esoteric movies that no one outside the festival circuit will ever see -- and to tsk-tsk about how Hollywood studios gobble up the bulk of the international press coverage with heavily stage-managed publicity blitzkriegs. In 1938, the jury at the Venice Film Festival -- the only entity of its kind at the time -- allegedly bowed to pressure from the Fascists and ignored Jean Renoir's beloved "The Grand Illusion" in favor of Leni Riefenstahl's "Olympia."

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